Countryman settled into his seat. The first phase of this operation had gone well. They had tested their weapons, and the results were excellent. Excellent enough that he already had Megumi drawing up plans to update their arsenal to include the new Compression Particle cannons. These new Mark Two Particle cannons were a major step forward in firepower, and they had even gotten some data on their performance verse shields. As a few bunkers had managed to get shields online during the bombardment. As it turned out, the additional power of these new weapons helped them against shields. Particle cannons remained ineffective, but they were more effective than before. That modest improvement would be of great help to them, for any future engagements.
The new mark II beam weapons were just as impressive. A solid improvement in most metrics over the older mark ones. They would take more power to operate, but the Enterprise already had the power generation for that. Largely due to the significant demands of the warp engines, and as a result they still had a fair amount of excess power to play around with. They had used a fair amount of that with boosting the armor, and weapons already, but they had pushed them to their limits and still had an excess of power. So the increased power demands wouldn’t be too much of an issue. Not during combat anyway.
For the moment, that wasn’t going to be the topic of discussion. Instead they were going to discuss what they were about to do with the captured cruiser. Well to be more accurate, they were going to discuss the refit project. Not that everyone knew that quite yet. Afterall he hadn’t shared his plans for it with the council. Only two other people knew, and that was because they were the only ones he deemed needed to know. Ruri and Richards, as the two of them had the skills and knowledge to reconfigure the cruiser for her new mission.
That new mission was naturally the complete destruction of the Cathamari homeworld, which was also the center of their civilization. Not to mention home to their leadership. It seemed only fitting since the damn bastards saw fit to do the same to humanity's own homeworld.
Megumi looking around the table, pressed a button after he gave her the signal. A hologram of the CIS Drakul’s Sword was projected above the table. It was a complete projection of the ship in its current state.
She smiled, “I’m sure everyone is familiar enough with the Ravager class, but for those that need it, I have distributed some reference material. Each of you should have everything we know about the ship class in front of you.”
Countryman listened along. The material in question was indeed in front of him. He didn’t need it, as he already knew how its systems were configured. Along with what weapons it carried. It was a battlecruiser, a ship type not employed by Earth or its colonies. Not for decades. Humans did experiment with that classification of ships, both during the naval era and during the colonial wars. The concept behind them was rather simple, take a capital ship hull capable of mounting high caliber weapon systems. That way it could mount the kind of firepower a battleship might have. These ships would also need to be fast, so they would carry powerful engines, but they would only be given a moderate level of protection. As such they would not be suited to duking it out with other capital ships, particularly battleships and dreadnoughts. Instead, they were well suited for cruiser hunting, and counter raider activities among other roles. Also like battleships, they were useful in a bombardment role.
As battlecruisers go, the Cathamari Ravager was actually fairly small with a length of 1240 meters, a span of 842 meters, and forty-seven decks. She was designed for a crew complement of almost eight hundred. The ship actually had a fairly significant propulsion system which after accounting for the various components such as thrusters, the warp drive, the power modules, and fuel storage took up roughly forty percent of internal hull space. However, those same systems also made them fairly fast. They were almost agile enough to keep up with Earth vessels.
Her armament was fairly substantial with seventy-two banks of heavy concussion plasma cannons supplemented by a series of forward plasma torpedo launchers. She also carried four torpedo bays allowing her to carry a fair number of those powerful warheads into battle. That armament could be quite devastating against any ship lacking in sufficient protection.
Of course, being a battlecruiser, her protection was fairly lacking. At its thickest, her hull plating was only two meters thick. The ship’s main defense was her shield generators, but the shields weren’t that strong. A concentrated torpedo barrage was often quite effective at bringing them down. Regardless that was the one system they didn’t really have a good understanding of. They had managed to take a look at every other system present on Cathamari ships but the shield generators. All they had were fried fragments, which gave them a rough idea of how it worked, but there were still a few unanswered questions regarding sufficient shield generation.
Williams interjected, “Why are we even talking about this? Just send it to Ruri, and let her study the shields. That is why we took it afterall?”
Countryman shook his head. At this point, there was no hiding his plan any longer. Not on a starship like this, where privacy was a luxury. Besides the rumor mill would be working overtime soon enough. “No, while intriguing, we didn’t take the ship so we could study her shields. We took the ship because we needed the hull itself.”
She frowned, “While an extra ship might help our crowding issues, I don’t see how a Cathamari hull would be of any real use to us. It would be more useful to study the shields.”
Richards tapped a key. “Actually the hull is very useful for one mission in particular, that Ruri, Countryman and myself discussed earlier. Now that we actually have a hull, we can put it into practice. I with Ruri’s help have already devised a refit plan. One that takes into account what resources are already available in the local area of the system.”
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Ruri interjected at that point, “As you can see, we have reconceived this battlecruiser, as an interstellar missile. We will reinforce the bow section, and reconfigure it to carry a primary warhead. It will also carry several smaller warheads intended to separate before contact with the target. Those warheads we already have on hand which will make things easier. As for the main warhead, we will have to construct one, but that shouldn’t be too hard seeing as the Cathamari have brought us the materials.”
Reynolds stated, “I see. Although as intriguing as this project is, what use is it to us?”
Countryman smiled, he had been waiting for that question. “There is one world, we now have coordinates for that would all agree would best be gone. Cathamair, homeworld of the Cathamari people, and the seat of their empire. I plan to destroy it, and now that we have captured one of their cruisers, we can do just that.”
Ruri said, “We can alright, and since this is going to be a one way trip, it frees us to remove certain limitations from the Cathamari warp engines. Using what we learned from our own warp research and interactions with the Krall. I have calculated that we can get that cruiser to exceed warp factor seven, possibly even reach warp eight. The engines will burn out by the time they reach Cathamair, but we don’t need them to last any longer than that. Although I will point out that pushing them that far will cause the ship to light up like a flare. Just about no one will miss that ship tearing through space at such speeds.”
Richards nodded, “Yes it would be quite visible, but no known Cathamari ship could intercept it. Not at those speeds. It will reach Cathamair long before they could gather enough ships for such a mission in the first place, especially after we are done augmenting her defenses.
She paused, and then continued, “ We can’t do much about her shields, but we can certainly upgrade her armor, and propulsion systems. We can also make some modifications to her cannons, can’t do much to improve their power, but we can improve the cooling systems. Not to mention, our particle cannons have better focusing mechanisms, with a bit of work we can adapt those to improve range. We think we can double their fire rate, and improve their range by just shy of twelve percent. That combination of upgrades when combined with the AI control system we plan to install would practically guarantee she reaches her target.”
Williams scoffed, “Are you idiots? Cyborgs are bad enough, but we all now how dangerous AI is. Just look at all the disaster stories. Better to steer clear of that entirely.”
Countryman gave her a look. “Most of those are fictional worst-case scenarios, and honestly not that big of a worry. The rest are the results of coding errors, human errors. Besides, we have been using AI on missiles, and ship weapons for hundreds of years without issue. It will be fine.”
Greyman finally spoke, “I concur. Your antiquated concerns are somewhat missplaced. The real question is where we will get the materials for our enhancements.”
Misaki who Countryman had make scans of the system earlier, interjected, “The planet is actually fairly rich in key minerals, but I also found an asteriod belt rich in the minerals we would need. It may be easier to harvest from that belt. It would also be out of the way in case someone else comes along while we are busy.”
Countryman smiled, “good that will help with putting it together.” then he looked at Richards, “How long do you think it will take you to refit that cruiser?”
“Given the extent of the modifications, I would say about a month maybe a little more. No more than two months. Given that length of time, we might as well get started updating our own armaments during the same period.
Ruri, who had been looking at Misaki’s survey readings sighed, “Unfortuantely this system doesn’t have any of that Erudite the Krall introduced us to. I would love to continue working with that stuff. It would prove invaluable for making better armor. I’m already working on an Erudite variant of our titan alloy, but I have hit a wall. I need more of the mineral to progress.”
Countryman sighed, “We can start conducting some long range scans for the stuff. It will give us an idea of where to look at least.”
Drakes interjected, “As soon as we are refitted, the Umikaze could aslo conduct some scouting missions for it.”
Reynolds also promptly volunteered his own ship for the job. In any case, they were likely going to need more of that mineral. Given its properties and the value it presented for ship armor, research into that substance may prove invaluable. Not to mention that project could save lives. Hence its a priority. Of course, they would be free to move, and Countryman hadn’t even mentioned the probe he acquired the one he would send along to confirm the results. Mainly since he didn’t want Williams to know everything.
What followed was a final discussion on the subject. As they worked out how viable such an undertaking was. The answer was quite viable. They would be forced to use some of their own technology for the project, but the beauty of employing antimatter would ensure that the cruiser would be vaporized on impact. Tracing the attack back to them would prove to be quite difficult. Even better such an attack was likely to destabilize the Cathamari Empire.
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Williams stepped out of the meeting, not entirely happy with how it went. While she was all for Cathamair being destroyed in this fashion, she didn’t want such a thing to happen while Countryman held the reins. She cursed. That damn machine probably planed this to solidify his hold. If he succeeded, it would be a huge setback to her plans. And this wasn’t just one more in a long line of setbacks. No this one would likely set her back years, and undo much of what progress she had made. She needed to figure out how to stop this mission from succeeding or her plans for six months from now would be jeopardized. The simple solution was to blow it up, but as anyone could tell you antimatter was volatile and dangerous. That stuff detonating while the Enterprise was in close proximity could seriously damage or even destroy the Enterprise. As such if she decided to blow it up, she would have to be very careful with how that sabotage was conducted. Very careful indeed.
She sighed, she had some thinking to do, and some planning to do. If she was going to take the simple option, she would have to consider how she would rig it to blow, and even get someone in a position to do that. That problem showed up with several other solutions to the issue, as many of them would require sabotage of one form or another. It seemed sabotage might be the answer, she just hoped security wasn’t too tight.